Lockout (2011)

Dir: James Mather, Stephen Saint Leger

Ex-CIA agent Snow (Guy Pearce THE ROVER) is in a world of hurt. Asked to provide backup by a friend to a deal over the mysterious contents of a briefcase, when the deal goes south and everyone but Snow lies dead, his only chance of survival is hanging onto the briefcase. A briefcase that the head of the Secret Service (Peter Stormare BRUISER) wants. Managing to hand off the case to his friend Mace (Tim Plester KICK-ASS), Snow proceeds to try and elude police capture in one of the worst CGI action sequence I've seen in some time. Bloody awful. Anyway, Snow is captured and the blame for the murders is placed on him. He is sentenced to thirty years in the M.S. One super max prison. As this is the future, 2079, prisoners are placed in stasis, frozen for the duration of their sentence. And the prison is in space!

Concurrently, the President of the United State's daughter Emilie (Maggie Grace THE FOG remake) is visiting the prison (in space!) to determine if the prisoners are being treated fairly. Emilie has heard reports that being placed in suspended animation messes with the mind. Unfortunately for her, the warden, the guards, and all the technicians aboard the orbiting prison, they picked the one inmate to interview that can escape (Joseph Gilgun HARRY BROWN). And escape he does. Freeing the other prisoners he takes those hostage who survived the initial outbreak.

Luckily for Prez, the government has just the man to break into the prison and free his daughter in custody, Snow. Working with the good cop in the Secret Service Harry (Lennie James THE WALKING DEAD), a plan is put into place to sneak Snow into the prison (in space!); his mission is to rescue Emilie and get her to an escape pod.

Guy Pearce does a decent job playing a wise crackin' bad ass in the Snake Plisken mode in this ode / homage / rip-off of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK / L.A. series. Luc Besson is attributed with the original idea for this French film in the credits. Carpenter apparently took umbrage and brought suit and the regional court of Paris agreed with him and awarded damages.

All the elements for a fun action film are here but I just could not go along with the inane script and enjoy the mindless action for what it was. Sure, the sub par video game graphics in the beginning of the film detracted from my ability to immerse myself into the film world but the remainder of the film's FX look fine. The script though is one stupid nonsensical contrivance after another. Everything from there being only one escape pod on the prison to the head of Secret Service relieving the President of his duties and taking charge in a move that would have made Alexander Haig proud.

LOCKOUT is yet another tepid action film.

** out of ****